The PCI Express™ interface protocol, as defined by the PCI Express Base Specification, Revision 1.0a (Apr. 15, 2003), is fast becoming a widely used standard across the computer industry for a high-speed data communication link. Currently, when two devices are interconnected with a multi-lane PCI Express™ link, all the lanes must work correctly for the entire link to work at all. If one or more lanes have a fault, the PCI Express™ Specification directs the devices to enter modes that prevent the entire link from working. The presence of a permanent failure on any of the lanes, such as a disconnected wire in a differential pair, leads to one of the two devices entering the Polling.Compliance state and prevents the link from working. In the Polling.Compliance state the entire link is supposed to transmit compliance patterns which are used to test the electrical eye diagram to see if the transmission circuitry is following the electrical specification. A common failure condition that leads to the transmission of the compliance patterns exists when one receiver lane of a differential pair is completely disconnected. In this case, the device detects a receiver since the receiver detection is performed on transmitter lanes. But the other (farther) device will not detect a receiver on the faulty lane and will not transmit any pattern on that lane and keep it electrically idle. Thus, even though the device detects a receiver on its faulty lane, it will not detect an exit from electrical idle on the faulty lane. Following the PCI-Express™ specification, all lanes of the device should transmit compliance patterns since the link training state machine will go to Polling.Compliance state. An undesirable side effect of this mechanism is that if a single wire of any differential pair is disconnected on the transmit side, the entire PCI Express™ link (including all lanes, not just the faulty lane) will be non-operational. This is a substantial hardware reliability and robustness issue because many end users want fault tolerance against one or more failures such as a single wire disconnect.